1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to livestock feeding systems and, in particular, to livestock feeding stations with scale assemblies.
2. Description of the Related Art
Meat packers and their customers are demanding the production and delivery of market animals with weights that must meet progressively tighter windows for acceptable weights. Marketing animals, whose weights fall outside the specified weight ranges usually result in significant deductions from market prices for such underweight or overweight animals. Historically pig producers selected animals for market by simple visual inspection relying on pig judging skills to identify market animals. Such methods are neither sufficiently accurate nor reliably consistent for modern markets.
Producers are also increasingly conscious that underfeeding or overfeeding not only hurts their bottom line profitability, but feeding a feed that is not optimum each phase of the growth cycle unnecessarily burdens them with waste nutrient disposal costs and regulatory review. To manage feed, phase feeding is increasingly employed changing feed composition to match growth utility at multiple intervals during the growth cycle. These changes are best accomplished with an accurate understanding of the daily weight distribution and its rate of change for the animals. Although visual inspection or fixed calendar-based growth curves have usually been the methods used to make phase feed changes, visual inspection is approximate at best, and growth curves do not take into account the effects of environmental temperatures, pen stocking densities or other factors that affect actual rate of gain.
Although using scales to weigh market animals or measure weight distributions is clearly desirable, manually weighing one animal at a time requires substantial labor and time, two commodities that are often unavailable in a modern finishing operation. Furthermore, manually weighing animals that fail to meet the marketing range always causes a temporary, but costly interruption to their normal growth. For phase feed changes, manually weighing of small samples of the pen is the only practical method but is not really much more accurate than visual estimating. If large numbers of animals must be inspected, the use of manual single-animal scales is simply too slow to be practical. Therefore, the implementation of an automated weighing system would increase efficiencies. The first step in automated weighing must be to spread the cost and equipment maintenance over a large number of animals. This consideration leads naturally to the conclusion that managing finishing pigs in large pens is highly desirable.
The use of individual gestation stalls or crates in environmentally controlled barns has generally become the accepted standard method for sow management, gradually replacing earlier group methods such as pasture gestation or small pen gestation of groups of 6 to 10 sows. Although gestation crates solve many management problems by eliminating agonistic sow interactions, crates are far from perfect, e.g. control of feed intake is insufficient to prevent excessive variability in sow condition, and recently in Europe gestation crates have become unacceptable owing to public perceptions of sow well-being.
Over the years, many studies attempted to understand how feeding of sows in groups could be managed with automated systems. One of these methods, Electronic Sow Feeding (ESF), uses an electronic feeding station that isolates each animal as they are sequentially fed by an automatic feed dispenser. Many reviews of these studies exist. These studies were mostly directed to the use of electronic feeding stations with small groups of sows or with single large groups with dynamic mixing. Osborne Industries initiated a study of electronic feeding stations about 20 years ago to understand animal behavior and performance in large groups of animals without mixing (static groups).
Electronic feeding stations for animals are known in the prior art. A typical electronic feeding station allows one animal to enter the station and eat its allotted feed amount without competition from other animals in a group managed system. For example, an electronic feeding station may have an entry gate which restricts entry to one sow at a time, a protected race, a feed bowl, an exit way with a one-way gate to prevent entry of animals as the eating sow leaves, and a feed and water dispensing mechanism with a feed hopper and feed station controller connected to a PC in a control room. Groups of sows, typically 50 to 60, are fed sequentially by the electronic feeding station.
The applicants have discovered that maintaining a farrowing group (i.e. sows with similar expected farrowing dates) together as much as possible is advantageous because it avoids the social adjustment that arises when new animals are introduced into a group. This practice works well for sow farms that manage increments of 1,200 sows because typically 50 sows are farrowed each week in such a farm (or 100 for a 2,400 sow farm, 150 for a 3,600 sow farm, etc.). For such a farm, typically 62 to 65 animals are bred with the expectation that about 20-25% of the sows will recycle and not maintain their pregnancy. Thus a farrowing group may start with 62 to 65 animals in the group, but by the end of the 114-day gestation period, only about 50 animals remain in the group. This group size fits the capacity of one typical electronic feeding station perfectly because up to about 65 animals can be fed by one electronic feeding station in a day without overloading the station. When the size of the sow farm does not permit optimum group sizes, then the electronic feeding stations are underutilized and less economic, or group mixing must occur which creates undesirable behavior between animals and difficulties for the farmer.
The mechanical parts of the electronic feeding station equipment experience very high rates of use in large groups and should be mechanically robust. Mechanical failure may create unacceptable habits of animal behavior very quickly and these habits may persist even after correction of failures. Repair should be easy and quick to avoid the possibility of establishing bad habits. Poor or weak mechanical design may attract destructive attention of animals in groups and should be avoided. In particular, the feed dispenser must be accurate without vibration or sow-induced spillage. Feed should be delivered at a rate that closely matches eating speed. This may be done automatically by assigning each animal to a feed curve, which establishes daily quantity and speed of feed delivery appropriate to its parity and production state. Addition of water to the feed bowl with each feed drop may be important to increase eating and reduce feed waste. The total weight of water should be adjustable and may be about equal the total weight of feed and may be dispensed uniformly with the feed. The electronic feeding station should be self-contained and capable of operating without continuous supervision of a personal computer by a human operator. The software that controls the electronic feeding station system should reliably manage the equipment and the data that the system generates. The electronics that connect the mechanical equipment power and conveys data to and from the software or handheld data loggers in the barn should also be robust. The electronic parts of the system should be protected from corrosive environments and from harmful power fluctuations. The electronics design should enable quick repair by semi-skilled service personnel.
Problems with existing electronic feeding station designs is that the animals weight data is not automatically connected to either the composition or type of feed the animal consumes nor the amount of feed the animal consumes. Currently the amount of food that is provided to the animal is based upon preset parameters retained in the controller software after the animal's RFID tag is read by the RFID antenna. In known operations where electronic feeding stations have been utilized, the electronic feeding station is separate from the weighing scale. This type of disconnected system does not allow for efficient data collection and comparison of food performance on weight data. This is particularly apparent when trying to collect weight data on a large animal population where several different food compositions are being examined. Another problem with some traditional feeders is competition among animals for food. In these situations the dominant animals in a group have no incentive to leave and can easily control access to the feeder and intimidate less aggressive animals. This type of behavior may lead to a wider spread of weights in the group and a longer time to market with higher facilities utilization costs.
Known electronic feeding station designs reduce or remove the competition for food creating a more relaxed environment for the animal to eat since only one animal can eat from the electronic feeding station at any given time. In this environment the animal is protected inside the confines of the electronic feeding station and can continue to eat without interruption until a specific animal's daily feed quota is met. If the same animal reenters the electronic feeding station after their quota is met then the controller will automatically open the door after obtaining the animal's identification number from its RFID tag. In this case, the entry door will remain open until the animal exits the electronic feeding station voluntarily or is physically moved out of the electronic feeding station by another incoming animal.
Genetics providers are also looking for more accurate methods for measuring the performance of various genotypes in relationship to environmental stimuli including without limitation (i) feed composition; (ii) methods of feeding; (iii) weight gain; (iv) birth statistics; and (v) and other key performance indicator values. Feed producers are also looking for more accurate methods for measuring the performance of various feed compositions to such parameters including without limitation (i) weight gain; (ii) birth statistics; (iii) percent return to estrus; (iv) 7 days post wean; (v) percent farrowing rate; (vi) litter birth weight; and (vii) litter wean weight.
Thus there is a need in the industry for an improved electronic feeding station that solves these problems.